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For "Grown Ups" Only!
Once again, English 251 doesn't fail to break any preset notions I had about college academics. Reading page after page of comics in preparation for class isn't exactly what I was expecting... But, the feat certainly wasn't as easy as it may sound to a stranger of this class. Reading fifty pages of Little Nemo can't be labeled with the same difficulty as reading fifty pages of Garfield or Calvin and Hobbes. Why?
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comics have been more before they were comics
Scott McCloud's book, which I remember reading in its entirety years ago, really brought home alot of expansive ideas, inclusive concepts. Even though it was an analysis of sorts, a textbook-subject discourse (allbeit a somewhat personal narrative) and it was not about action and plot and fun per se, I was absorbed at that time. I could feel, like I sometimes do, that I was dragging a small part of myself ever onward through this "page turner", wondering what was next, how it would end, wanting to get more, learn more.
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Peanuts: To Hell With Comics
90% of news paper comics, or, hell, internet comics are the same. Okay, maybe not 90%. I don't have statistics. And I'm not going to do research on it. But a lot of them are the exact same formula. They have a set up involving a recurring theme and recurring characters and the payoff is always the same. Garfield is a prime example of this. Can you think of any Garfield strips that don't center around A) Garfield being fat/lazy/obsessed with lasagna B) Jon being a loser or C) Odie being a moron?
Neither can I.
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Getting Schooled by the "Boy Who Lived" Really Set the Record Straight
When I first read "Setting the Record Straight", I wondered what the little Harry Potter look alike McCloud was doing talking to me. The metaleptic element was not lost on me, but I found it amusing that a little cartoon man was defending comics. I never really had anything against comics, in fact I was a faithful reader of the comics in the Washington Post, but comic books always struck me as something of days gone by... nostalgic art forms collecting dust in basements everywhere. As he continued his visually captive argument, I found myself agreeing with McCloud.
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the limits of big animation, the liberties of small comics... "Vacation Time"
The simple and familiar forms of Donald Duck and the nephews of Disney iconography present us with simple exposition and fare. Or do they? At once, I read thru the entire of the 30 odd pages of panels and at the very least found it well made for a comic book; I was not slowed down in the least by the details -this is something of its transparency. The style of the drawing seemed typical of american forms of earlier 20th century times, but there was the undeniably rich landscapes and well placed juxtapositions of objects.
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